SF mayoral race defies description or prediction

San Francisco voters are rubbing their aching temples and the nation is watching agog as a city renowned for outlandish politics grapples with what's arguably its most tumultuous mayoral election ever.

Debates have been long on candidates and short on time and offered little more than sound bites for voters trying to distinguish one candidate from another. Campaigners have left few doors unknocked or phones uncalled in their efforts to raise support, especially since ballots were mailed out and early voting began Oct. 11.

"Never before in San Francisco history have so many political heavyweights faced off for the same brass ring," said Alex Clemens, a San Francisco public affairs consultant who has run "The Usual Suspects" website on the city's politics since 1995. "It's a massive game of musical chairs that's going to end suddenly and dramatically."

Interim Mayor Ed Lee -- the former city administrator who took office in January after previous Mayor Gavin Newsom was sworn in as California's lieutenant governor -- apparently is the man to beat, consistently ahead in polls since entering the race in August after having insisted he wouldn't run.

But polls can be deceiving here.

In ranked-choice, or instant-runoff, voting, a voter selects his or her first-, second- and third-choice candidates.

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If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first-choice vote, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those who voted for that person have their second- and third-choice picks added to the tally.

Candidates are eliminated this way until somebody tops 50 percent and is declared the winner.

San Francisco voted in 2002 to adopt this system, which took effect in 2004; Newsom won re-election in 2007 with about 70 percent of the vote outright, so this hasn't previously been an issue in a mayoral race.

Yet San Franciscans need only look across to the sunny side of the bay to see how the system could render polls useless. Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata was polling well right up to last year's Election Day, only to lose to Jean Quan after all other candidates were eliminated.

Many San Francisco mayoral candidates could be vying for a come-from-behind victory this way. Other prominent names in the race include state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco; City Attorney Dennis Herrera; Public Defender Jeff Adachi; County Assessor Phil Ting; Board of Supervisors President David Chiu; Supervisor John Avalos; and former supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Bevan Dufty and Tony Hall.

"You just cannot replicate all of the effects of ranked-choice voting in a 10-minute telephone poll of 600 people; it is impossible," Clemens said.

The tremendous field of candidates has been nurtured by San Francisco's adoption of publicly financed campaigns: Any candidate who accepts public money and then drops out of the race would have to repay it, a strong incentive to stay in for the long haul. And big spending by Lee -- who opted not to take public money -- and his supporters has boosted other candidates' maximum public financing to $950,000 each.

Still, a crowded field this year might have been inevitable with or without ranked-choice voting and public financing, as many local politicians who'd bided their time during Newsom's reign unleashed their ambitions, said Richard DeLeon, a San Francisco State professor emeritus of political science and an expert in the city's politics

Ranked-choice voting actually might be a better method for an election such as this, giving voters more chances to express their issue-oriented, racial, gender and other allegiances.

"There's a pliability and malleability to ranked-choice voting that allows you to vote in multiple dimensions," DeLeon said

The race has seen plenty of finger-pointing and backbiting.

Seven candidates last week asked Secretary of State Debra Bowen and the U.S. Justice Department to send election monitors and probe allegations of ballot tampering by a neighborhood group supporting Lee; Lee has disavowed the group. This month, the district attorney launched a probe of allegedly shady donations to Lee's campaign from an airport shuttle company's employees.

Meanwhile, a Modesto Assembly member who had a previous beef with Yee paid for a robocall urging a few thousand city voters not to vote for him; Chinatown leaders knocked Herrera for switching from supporting the Central Subway project to opposing it; and Adachi and Lee tout rival pension-reform plans, both of which are ballot measures unto themselves.

"What's interesting in this race is we've actually had three different elections by now," said University of San Francisco assistant professor Corey Cook, who directs the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.

First, Lee wasn't running, and many experts foresaw the possibility of a repeat of last year's District 10 supervisorial race, with a huge pool of candidates but few serious contenders and a nail-biting finish.

Then, Lee was running, and almost immediately was a front-runner with incumbent approval ratings that made him look like a shoo-in. Now, other candidates seem to have the momentum and endorsements as Lee's campaign and supporting committees keep shooting him in the foot.

"It's gotten a lot more negative, a lot more pointed, in the final stretch here," Cook said.

"Now people wonder is there going to be an 'anybody-but-Ed-Lee thing,' which just a couple of weeks ago seemed unimaginable.

"Everyone was saying it had gotten boring, but it's not boring anymore."